The Life Hacks You Really Need NOW!

Every time I log into some social media site, I’m thrilled to discover all the new life hacks that show me how I’ve been doing everything wrong all my life. Mostly, it’s things like opening your beer bottle with a Q-tip or turning your socks into parachutes if the plane is going down, and I appreciate all these bits of online wisdom as much as anyone. Maybe more.

Still, most of these new skills are pretty limited in scope and, worse, they’re the kinds of things you won’t remember the next time you can’t find a bottle opener or your plane is about to crash. As always, the team at Dad Writes is willing to fill the gap with great life hacks you can really use. Such as…

The best way to end any meeting/party that’s gone on too long is to just start talking about yourself. Really, everyone says they find you interesting and that you should write a book about your fascinating experiences, but they only do that so you’ll share your nachos. Pretty much any story that begins, “back in the day,” will suffice and you’ll be free of boring people within five minutes. Of course, they’ll say the same about you, but it’s a fair price to pay.

The best way to get out of unpleasant chores is to do them, but do them so badly that someone else needs to work twice as hard to fix the mess you’ve left behind. While making a mess of things, be sure to ask repeatedly, “How do I do this again?” and “When do I add the formaldehyde?” N.B.: This life hack isn’t for lazy people, because you might need to screw up the project three or four or five times before people just give up on you and stop asking.

The best way to get out of punishment when you do something stupid is to quickly accept blame and then start complaining about anything that the wronged individual hates. For example: “Sorry I left the kids in the shopping mall overnight. I was just so agitated about the way (conservatives/progressives/Klingons) are destroying America that I lost track of time. Don’t you wish we could take back our country?”

The best way to pawn off some assignment at work is to tell a colleague, “Why don’t you take the first pass on this, since you’re so good at _______.” This one is actually a double hack, because you have the perfect foil for anything that goes wrong. “I should never have let Carl take on this project, but he begged me for the opportunity and I was hoping he wouldn’t screw it up.”

The best way to sound really smart is to reference some book that everyone’s heard of and nobody has actually read. (It’s a lot like politicians who talk about the Constitution.) My personal favorite is “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking, which still ranks at the top of the list of bestsellers that will never be adapted for stage or screen.

The best way to get someone to return a phone call is to call the help desk at United Airlines and get put on hold for 45 minutes while you’re waiting for an agent to solve your problem. There are so few guarantees in life, but here are two: First, everyone you’ve ever called will decide to ring you back while you’re in the queue and, second, if you put your customer service call on hold in order to answer any of those calls, the agent will pick up, get no response from you, and dump your connection.

The best way to win a political argument is, um, uh, well, you see, it’s really…damn. Did we ever tell you how to turn a pickle jar into a diving bell?

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